This Season’s Draft
by Jason Gent
(Allen & Unwin)
I read Jason Gent’s This Season’s Draft about a group of older teens preparing for the AFL draft in one sitting. I was transfixed. This novel takes the perspective of each protagonist, is easy to read while packing an emotional punch and is ideal for schools and reluctant readers.
Joy Lawn
Jason, thanks for writing about your writing process with such depth and honesty. Enjoy Jason’s words below (includes spoilers):
Jason Gent on writing This Season’s Draft for PaperbarkWords blog
For me, the joy in writing has always been the joy of the journey, following the idea, but that joy leads to a lot of time editing.
I’ve tried to be a better planner. I’ve kept notes. I get out of bed when I’m on the edge of sleep and I get that perfect idea, because I’ve forgotten too many. But the problem with notes is what to do with them all? They end up spread across several notebooks, in between poems and raps, and when I try to collate them into some kind of order, I get lost in all these other stories and ideas.
My last book was different. I’d thought about it for 20 years. A couple of months before I began writing, I started a spreadsheet with the names of six characters, and notes for each one underneath. I knew the complete arcs of some of their stories. But I didn’t know how to start.
There is an exact spot where my ideas crystallised, and the book became clear. It was on Craig Street in Wishart, near a boomer’s house who keeps the grass immaculate. I was jogging. I am not an easy jogger. And the spot where my book crystallised is not an easy spot to jog. It’s up a slight hill. A slow hill. Near the end of my run, close to the spot where I could slow to a walk. In some ways that’s the hardest part of a jog, near the end.
I was running up that slow hill, covered in sweat and short of breath, when I thought, Maybe if I come up with the title, that will help me start? Almost instantaneously, it hit me – This Season’s Draft. The book’s divided into the four seasons, one chapter for each character. I kept jogging. I made it easily to the end of my run, with a smile on my face and full of breath. I’d known then the book had taken shape.
The first chapter is about Elias running because he doesn’t want to watch the Draft. It’s funny now when I read the first part, because Elias makes running sound so easy, so light; it’s what I wish running was like for me. His mantra was my mantra when I was running: ‘Land on the midsole, stand up nice and tall, lean slightly forward, find your cadence, don’t overstride.’
The first characters I came up with were Dane and Beth. Originally, the story was going to be a love story, a classic love triangle. Beth was being pursued by Trav, and Dane was pursuing everyone else. Dane was always going to get a serious injury after Beth had broken up with him.
In my spreadsheet before I started writing, I had distilled Dane into the one note: ‘Star on the team, star of high school, gets everything he wants.’ I knew so much about Dane that I didn’t need a lot of notes on him. I’d seen him in people I’d worked with, big forwards I’d played footy with. He has a presence, a self-assuredness that not everyone will like. My main aim with Dane was to make sure he wasn’t one or two-dimensional.
The final part that I wrote for the book, during the editing process, was Dane doing the practice exam, knowing he’s not going to get drafted.
I’d originally intended having Beth chatting with Trav in art class as her opening scene but changed it when I was writing about Dane at the party. Beth has some of my favourite scenes in the book. Her autumn scene is very much reflective of my experience of writing: ‘Ideas became frantic. I sketched quickly in my notepad, messy. I had to get my ideas down so they wouldn’t forget me.’
I knew Mason’s arc best of all the characters before starting the book. I tried to write him in a similar way to how he kicks with his dad in the backyard; short and sharp. I started the autumn chapter with Mason outside his dad’s hospital room and let the characters lead the scene. I was close to tears when finishing it. The winter scene was similar. I put Mason in the backyard with Mum and let it all unfold; the humour was all driven by Mum.
I kept adding to my spreadsheet as I wrote the book. By the time I’d written the first half, I had detailed notes for chapters three and four for each character, except Zac and Fletcher, or as I’ve always called them, The Boys.
Zac and Fletcher were the last two characters I came up with. My spreadsheet only had five lines of notes for them for the entire book. They had each other to bounce off. Whenever I needed some action, I got them to talk to one another. I still love reading their scenes. The way they talk to one another reminds me of friendships I’ve had and friendships I’ve seen in other people. I call it competitive caring.
One of the mantras I had when writing the book was, Get to the party late and leave early. In the scene when the boys are being interviewed, and Zac realises they’re going to be split up by the Draft, I became emotional, like I had when I wrote Mason’s scenes; I knew then that it was time to leave.
The other mantra I had was, Don’t Bore Us, Get To The Chorus! It’s the name of the greatest hits album by Swedish pop rock duo, Roxette. I wanted the writing to keep to the point.
I wrote the book in three weeks. That sounds impressive on its own but doesn’t include all the books I read in the lead up, or the fact the characters walked around in my head for 20 years. My spreadsheet of notes was a way of distilling the characters into their purest motives and then, for the second half of the book, to make sure I didn’t forget where they were going.
I no longer live in Wishart, but I still go there sometimes for work. Every once in a while, I drive up Craig Street just so I can remember the moment the book crystallised. I didn’t just come up with a title the day I was running up that slow hill, but a format and structure that gave me the freedom to follow my ideas, and let my characters walk around on the page, instead of only in my head.
paperbarkwords.blog 